Nothing may be assumed without justification,
unless it is evident
or known on the basis of experience
or is secured by the authority of Holy Scripture.
Wilhelm von Ockham (1288 - 1347)
The English theologian and philosopher William of Ockham was an advocate of the principle of intellectual parsimony, which was later named after him: Explanations should be as simple as possible and based only on empirical facts or established assumptions. On the other hand, all assumptions that are only introduced ad hoc for the purpose of a single explanation and for which there is no further justification should be avoided. As the metaphorical image of the razor suggests, explanations should be reduced to the essentials and everything superfluous should be removed.
Originally, this intellectual principle of economy comes from Christian scholasticism; this is where the reference to the Bible in Occam's quote comes from. However, it has also proved its worth as a guideline for thinking. Today, Ockham's razor is regarded in the theory of science as a quality standard for the formulation of theories:
- Of several possible explanations for a situation, the simplest theory is preferable to all others.
- A theory is simple if it contains as few hypotheses and free parameters as possible.
In addition, a third rule can be derived from Ockham's approach:
3. A theory which is able to explain a wider range of phenomena is preferable to a theory which applies only to a very limited set of situations
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